IT Network Outages Cost Businesses Billions of Dollars

One quarter of enterprise IT systems suffered unplanned outages of four hours or more during the past year, costing billions of dollars in profits, according to a survey of 7,000 businesses.

One quarter of enterprise IT systems suffered unplanned outages of four hours or more during the past year, according to a survey by IT systems integrator CDW. The survey, released March 22, polled 7,000 businesses.

Based on this data, CDW estimates that such network outages cost U.S. businesses $1.7 billion in lost profits last year.

In its Business Continuity Straw Poll, CDW queried about 7,000 medium-size and large U.S. enterprises about significant network disruptions they had experienced since July 2009. The survey aimed to ascertain how well businesses reacted to disruptions and to determine the measures IT managers are taking to improve their business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.

As might be expected, power outages ranked as the No. 1 cause of business disruptions, with one third of businesses also reporting that this cause also prompted their most recent disruption. Hardware failures caused 29 percent of network outages, followed by a loss of telecom services to facilities (21 percent), CDW said.

Regardless of the cause of disruption, more than half of respondents (57 percent) reported productivity losses as the No. 1 negative effect of their network disruptions, primarily due to reduced access to the network itself or to applications, data and communications systems.